New York, NY | ArtTable’s Art Law Series: Building and Managing a Fine Art Collection

This program is hosted in partnership with and supported by Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP

ArtTable’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Anne-Laure Alléhaut is Counsel in Patterson Belknap’s Art and Museum Law practice. Anne-Laure started her career at Skadden Arps in M&A before serving as a Senior Vice President of Sotheby’s legal transactional team, negotiating many of the auction house’s most complex and high value transactions while also overseeing Sotheby’s advisory, appraisal and valuation departments.

Anne-Laure brings 18 years of law firm and in-house experience to the art industry and draws on her broad and deep experience to advise her clients with speed and efficiency. Her client base includes private collectors, galleries, estates, start-ups, art dealers, museums, advisors and financial institutions. Anne-Laure is a graduate of Université Paris X, Nanterre and Université Paris II, Panthéon-Assas. She received her J.D. and LL.M. from Cornell University.

Maura Kehoe Collins is founder and director of Artiphile, an independent art advisory firm specializing in art collections management services.  Established in 1991 to promote the conscientious stewardship of cultural property, Artiphile is primarily concerned with the preservation of artistic and historic works held in collections outside museums.  Artiphile implements museum standard procedures for inventory and registration, cataloguing, photo-documentation and records management, condition surveys and baseline condition reports; advises on installation, conservation and framing, lighting, environmental controls, appraisal and insurance needs, loans, storage, packing, and transit; provenance and authentication procedures, as well as succession concerns. All needs germane to the proper maintenance of any art collection large or small, from acquisition to disposition.

Collins is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College with a BA in Art History and a minor in Asian Studies acquired during fourteen months of study in Taiwan and at Beijing Normal University in the PRC.  During college Collins worked as a curatorial assistant in the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and as acting registrar initiated the project to computerize the Museum’s catalogue.  In post graduate studies Collins was the first recipient of the C.V. Starr Fellowship for training in Far Eastern Art Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, a position she held for three years.  A Kress Foundation grant then funded an internship in the Eastern Pictorial Art Conservation Department of the British Museum, London, which led to a permanent post.  Collins continued her interest in computerized documentation by representing her department on a task force to network conservation records in all UK museums.

Sharon Chrust has been involved in the Contemporary Art market for over 25 years.  In 2003, she started Sharon Chrust & Associates, which provides appraisal and art consulting services to private and corporate clients. She has attained the highest accreditation of the Appraisers Association of America, that of a Certified member and is the Immediate Past President of the Board of the organization.  In addition, Sharon has been an adjunct instructor at New York University in the Appraisal Studies program, is an instructor for the Appraisers Association of America’s CASP program, and was President of the Board of Franklin Street Works, a non-profit arts space in Stamford, Connecticut.

Sharon has participated in a number of national and international panels, and discussions on art and art appraising, in cities as diverse as Shanghai, New York City, Greenwich, and Sarasota. She has been quoted in articles in Artnews, and Artsy, and has written articles on insurance appraisals, and contributed essays to publications on posthumous editions, and appraisal writing. Prior to starting Sharon Chrust & Associates, Sharon was a gallery director at the Waterside Art Gallery in Stamford, CT, a docent at the Whitney Museum of American Art and worked in the public relations department of the Cooper Hewitt Museum. She has a Masters in Art History from Hunter College, a BA from Boston University, has completed the Certificate of Appraisal Studies at NYU and has passed the Uniform Standards of Appraisal Practice Exam.

Tanya Wells began her career in museum education at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth under Terri Thornton and Michael Auping. She has worked as a specialist and sales director with Christie’s New York and Bonhams in 19th and 20th Century art for almost twenty years. Tanya also spent a brief time with Winston Art Group in the advisory division assisting large collections and family offices. 

Tanya currently owns and oversees TMSW Art Advisory, an independent practice focused on creating fine art collections and consulting with families and fiduciaries to manage the unique needs of collectors during a transition, or at the end of a collecting period. Tanya is a former participant in the ArtTable career fair, a member of The Modern and Contemporary Collectors Committee of The Morgan Library and Museum, an IFAR supporter, and recently became a member of The Cosmopolitan Club.